In the aftermath of Saturday's postponement of the Notts County game, Bradford City's Commercial Director Roger Owen, today spoke to the Club Website.
"First of all, on behalf of the Board, I would like to repeat our thanks to all the volunteers who turned up on Saturday morning. Their efforts are much appreciated. I would also like to thank the various individuals who turned up at the Coral Windows Stadium during the week and gave some very valuable assistance.
I have been prompted to speak in light of some really quite hurtful comments which have been passed on the fans discussion site over the weekend relating to the capabilities of those at the Club who worked so hard to get Saturday's game on.On the other hand, I have been heartened by some of the other comments which have appeared in the last 24 hours, and prior to the weekend from people who see communications from the Club regarding this match, as an improvement against what has gone on in the past.Thanks to them for their kind thoughts.
The Board and Stuart McCall, discussed the prospects for the Notts County game at its routine Meeting on 7th January, over a week before the game was due to take place. During the course of that Meeting we learnt that our planned fixture with Port Vale had been postponed and got a very broad hint that the upcoming game at Aldershot would also bite the dust, which it did.
After some discussion with Stuart, we agreed with his view that the Notts County game should go ahead, and that we should make every effort to get it on, and there were 4 reasons for this:-
1.Notts County are not having the best of times financially at the moment, they face a winding up order and they had publicly stated that they hoped new finance would be in place for 15th January, the day before our game. We took the view that if this finance was not in place, the news could have an adverse impact on all the playing staff and moral as it would appear that Notts County would then be heading for a winding up hearing on 27th January. We felt that we should take advantage of this situation.
2.If Notts County's financial problems were to be solved we could see a situation where they may make some more big money signings who would be available to play as and when any postponed match was rearranged and we felt we should play them before this possibility became a fact.
3.With the postponements against Port Vale, Aldershot and Bury, we would already be in a position of playing 2 games a week towards the end of the season, and a further postponement would only add to this.Given that Stuart has stated that he feels the Club can still make a run and achieve a playoff position, we felt that we should try and avoid, where possible, the stress of two games each week where it was in our hands to do so.
4.Notts County had taken 1000 tickets for the game and the revenue issues around this are important when set against the revenue we might achieve for a mid week game.
All the above are perfectly valid reasons why we should and did make a serious attempt to get the match on.
Looking now at issues around and on the ground, David Baldwin, David Dowse and myself set up a mini group to deal with bad weather conditions following the issues we had faced in getting on the games against Shrewsbury & Cheltenham over the holiday period.We had only managed to clear the car parks for the Shrewsbury game at the last minute and it was agreed after that, that we needed to be more proactive around the ground.David Dowse's focus was on the pitch and our volunteers did a great job but the outside conditions nearly caught us out.
David Baldwin, David Dowse and myself met last Monday and agreed a plan of actions, including the hiring of contractors. In order to keep costs down it was agreed none of the external areas around the ground would be tackled until later in the week to see if the rather poor weather forecast improved. Mick Doyle, head grounds man, started removing snow to the edge of the pitch on Monday and by the time we finished on Tuesday almost 85% of the pitch had been cleared, had grass exposed and proved that the pitch underneath was in good condition with only a nominal amount of frozen area.
Given that the weather forecast was for above freezing temperatures during daytime the pitch was left open so that the small affected areas could defrost. Snow clearing equipment was arranged for the outside of the ground for Wednesday and we all know what happened on Wednesday morning!, having taken two steps forward the weather of Wednesday morning caused us to take three steps back.
From Wednesday lunchtime through to Friday evening we got on with and successfully completed the clearing of the snow from the Co-operative stand, Carlsberg stand and Burlington Street car parks, we cleared the players Matchday car park and Bateman Street nursery school car park and put a significant effort into clearing safe footpaths along Burlington Street and along both sides of Midland Road for a substantial distance towards Kings Road. A large area of road and pavement were cleared in the area where Notts County fans coaches were to disembark and snow clearance along the touch line of the main stand and behind the T L Dallas goals were complete.
All in all we moved to one side or transported off site over a 1000 tons of snow in the most difficult of conditions. At one time we had a maximum of 5 machines, one dumper and one wagon involved in these operations which have cost the club a significant amount of money.
When I left the ground on Friday evening the pitch was playable.
Unfortunately from the early hours of Saturday heavy rain fell on the ground but despite this up to about 10 am the groundsman Mick Doyle and facilities manager David Dowse were quietly confident that the match would still go ahead. Notts County were travelling by this time and even when the decision to call referee Simon Hooper was taken, Mr Hooper gave us every chance by delaying his match off decision for sometime to see if conditions would improve. The decision was so marginal.
In the end the right decision was taken and I believe the referee's conduct in this was first class.
I very much regret the uncalled for comments which have appeared and are principally aimed at the perceived abilities of our head groundsman. If there was a hero of last week it was Mick Doyle and no one else and I will not hear a bad word said about his efforts and the volunteers during the week and on Saturday. Similarly our contractors did a first class job around the ground and if the snow had not melted away by the torrential rain of early Saturday, fans arriving for the match would have seen what a great job everyone had done.
I believe that if anyone has any criticism they should address it directly to the board and I join with Mark Lawn's recent match day comments and a call for a removal of anonymity on web site addresses. Some of the criticisms from people who call themselves fans were beyond the pale.
When you consider that matches featuring Premiership clubs were postponed recently at Wigan (twice) Blackburn and Manchester City, with many other in lower divisions because of conditions outside the ground then perhaps some people will realise just what a great effort was made.
I hope we can put this petty criticism behind us all and concentrate on the real issues of supporting Stuart in a push for the playoff places".
